Empathy, an important but problematic concept

ABSTRACT

The concept of empathy as it is used in scholarly discourse has been challenged for over 50 years, yet the same ambiguities and controversies associated with the concept persist and, indeed, have accelerated with the accumulation of definitions, subconstructs that are included under the empathy umbrella, and measuring instruments. In this article we address the following interrelated problems: many definitions, authors not offering definitions, authors using instruments that do not match their definitions, authors not specifying definitions and measurements in cited studies, the jingle-jangle problem, and the persistent need for more construct validity research. In this Special Issue on empathy and its problems, authors bring new theoretical insights, creative research designs, and a critical focus on the empathy concept itself.

KEYWORDS:

• Empathy
• jingle-jangle fallacy
• conceptual definitions
• operational definitions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. As the reader sees, we put quotation marks around the word “empathy.” By so doing, we emphasize that empathy is an abstract concept. Repeated repetition of the term empathy without qualification inevitably brings risk of reification and, obviously, confusion. However, for reading ease we drop the quotation marks in the remainder of this article and mainly use the preferred terms empathy concept or empathy construct. When we do refer simply to empathy, it is only for simplicity; we hope the reader understands this represents no assumptions on our part about what that term means.

2. Authors have proposed many tendencies, skills, attitudes, and behaviors as the ingredients in empathy, which we call empathy subconstructs in this article. There is no consensual nomenclature, nor is there a consensual list of what these subconstructs are or how they should be defined or labeled. Commonsense names for some of these are tenderheartedness, taking another’s point of view, judging others’ states and traits accurately, feeling others’ feelings, aversive reactivity to emotional situations, identity immersion in fictional characters, and enactment of certain verbal and nonverbal behaviors.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.